As the costs of living in Romania has increased, many Romanian women have begun to look for ways in which they can work, thereby contributting to the household income, while - at the same time - remaining at the heart of their families.      Foster care is one such option.      Foster care was legalized as one form of child protection by the Government Emergency Orderly no. 26. Government Decree no. 217, 1998 which instituted a new profession, that of Professional Foster Carer. Within the domain of child protection, the occupation of Foster Carer is carried on within the framework of the General Directions for Children's Rights Protection(D.G.P.D.C.).

     The institutionalization of a child - no matter how good the care is - causes trauma which marks the life and personality of the child and can even delay the normal course of his growth or bring

about negative effects such as: physical, neurological, psychological, social development are reduced due to lack of affection; underdevelopment of the personality (lack of individual programs); the lack of family, of parental models makes the creation of social role models (which the child can aim at) impossible; delays in physical and mental development (physical disabilities, deficitary attention syndrome, weak cognitive development); lack of independence;

autistic tendencies - the child has stereotypical behaviour, he avoids any physical and vizual contact, lives in a world of his own;

self-aggression.

These negative effects could be diminished by integrating the child into a family. The foster mother receives the child in her family unconditionally, treats him like an individual, not like a group or after a classification in accordance with some imposed criteria. Inside the family, the child is treated as a person having a body, spirit and soul. The foster mother is concerned about the harmonious development of the whole child.      Taking into account all the above mentioned aspects, the "Joseph" Foundation - as a non-profit organization

- has created a network of professional foster mothers who can respond to the physical, psycho-social, developmental and spiritual needs of the child.
     From 1998, the "Joseph" Foundation has had about 200 children who have been taken into care by foster mothers. Now, the "Joseph" Foundation monitors 76 children who are being cared for by foster mothers. 8 of these children are in Iasi, and the other 68 are in 19 villages around Iasi. These children came either from the streets or from disorganized families or had been abandoned in hospitals. All of them have been victims of different forms of abuse or neglection (physical, emotional, sexual). Some had first been "sheltered" in the "Joseph" House, where they benefitted from social and psychological support with the view to being integrated into a family.